CHICAGO —

A major winter storm that already cut electric power to about 350,000 homes and businesses from Texas to the Ohio Valley was set to leave Pennsylvania and New England glazed in ice and smothered in snow Friday, forecasters said.

A foot of snow was expected to accumulate in northern New York and northern New England, but it was the ice that threatened to wreak havoc on travel and electric service in the Northeast before the storm heads out to sea late Friday and Saturday, said Rick Otto, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

“Snow is a lot easier to plow than ice,” he said.

Even after the storm pushes off to sea late Friday and Saturday, ice and snow were expected to linger through the weekend because of subfreezing temperatures, Otto said.

About 350,000 homes and businesses lost power from Texas to Ohio on Thursday as freezing rain and snow weighed down tree limbs and encrusted power lines, part of a winter storm that caused a deadly tornado in Alabama, dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest and brought rare measurable snowfall and hundreds of power outages to parts of Texas.

The highest totals of power outages blamed on icy or downed power lines were concentrated in Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Ohio, but the path of the storm stretched further from the South and Northeast on Thursday. Several schools and universities across the region closed on Friday as a result of poor weather conditions.

Along the warmer side of the storm, strong thunderstorms capable of damaging wind gusts and tornadoes were possible Thursday in parts of Mississippi and Alabama, the Storm Prediction Center said.

In western Alabama, a tornado that hit a rural area Thursday afternoon killed one person, a female he found under rubble, and critically injured three others. A home was heavily damaged.

Tornadoes in the winter are unusual but possible, and scientists have said the atmospheric conditions needed to cause a tornado have intensified as the planet warms.

Heavy snow the storm brought to Midwestern states isn't unusual, except the bigger-than-normal path of intense snow in some places, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. With a warmer climate, people are forgetting what a Midwestern winter had long been like, he said.

"The only amazing winters I've been able to experience is through my parents' photographs of the 1970s," Gensini, who is 35, said. "This (storm) is par for the course, not only for the past, but winters current."

More than 20 inches of snow was reported in the southern Rockies, while more than a foot of snow fell in areas of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

The flight-tracking service FlightAware.com showed more than 9,000 flights in the U.S. scheduled for Thursday or Friday had been canceled, on top of more than 2,000 cancellations Wednesday as the storm began.

"Unfortunately, we are looking at enough ice accumulations that we will be looking at significant travel impacts," Orrison said.

At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, an American Airlines hub, an estimated 700 customers stayed Wednesday night in its terminals, according to an airport statement. Airport personnel provided pillows, blankets, diapers and infant formula to the marooned travelers. Airport officials said in the same statement that on Thursday night "we are ready to provide assistance in anticipation of customers who may need to stay in the terminals."

The Ohio Valley was especially affected Thursday, with 211 flight cancellations at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on Thursday. An airport spokeswoman told the Cincinnati Enquirer that all flights were canceled Thursday except for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines flights before noon.

Nearly all Thursday afternoon and evening flights were canceled at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, and Friday flights could be as well, spokeswoman Natalie Chaudoin told the Louisville Courier-Journal. UPS suspended some operations Thursday at its Worldport hub at the airport, a rare move.

Almost 300,000 homes and businesses were still without power as night fell Thursday, most of them in Tennessee and Ohio, according to the website poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. As night fell Thursday, almost 150,000 Tennessee customers were without power, including about 135,000 in the Memphis area alone — or one-third of the customers of Memphis Light, Gas & Water.

Power restoration could take days, said Gale Carson, the utility's spokeswoman. "It's not going to be a quick process," she said.

Six people were taken to a hospital after a 16-vehicle crash on a Memphis highway. Two were in critical condition when taken to an emergency room after the crash on Austin Peay Highway, the Memphis Fire Department said on Twitter. Four others suffered non-critical injuries.

Trees sagged under the weight of ice in Memphis, resulting in fallen tree limbs and branches. Parked cars had a layer of ice on them and authorities in several communities around the city warned of some cars sliding off slick roadways.

Meantime, almost 70,000 were without power in Ohio, with large percentages of the population in southeastern Ohio in the dark.

In Texas, the return of subfreezing weather brought heightened anxiety nearly a year after February 2021's catastrophic freeze that buckled the state's power grid for days, leading to hundreds of deaths in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history.

Facing a new test of Texas' grid, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said it was holding up and on track to have more than enough power to get through the storm. Texas had about 70,000 outages by Thursday morning, nowhere close to the 4 million outages reported in 2021. About half had their power restored by evening.

Abbott and local officials said Thursday's outages were due to high winds or icy and downed transmission lines, not grid failures.

In Dallas, where snow rarely accumulates, the overnight mix of snow and freezing rain had hardened Thursday afternoon into an icy slick that made roads perilous.

South Bend, Indiana, reported a record snowfall for the date on Wednesday with 11.2 inches, eclipsing the previous record of 8 inches set on the date in 1908, said Hannah Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's office in Syracuse, Indiana.

Once the storm pushes through, she said temperatures will see a big drop, with Friday's highs mostly in the upper teens followed by lows in the single digits in northern Indiana, along with bone-chilling wind chills.

"It's definitely not going to be melting real quick here," Carpenter said Thursday morning.

The frigid temperatures settled into areas after the snowy weather, with Kansas residents awakening to dangerous wind chills of around 15 below zero. In New Mexico, schools and nonessential government services were closed in some areas Thursday because of icy and snow-packed roads.

The disruptive storm began Tuesday and moved across the central U.S. on Wednesday's Groundhog Day, the same day the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. The storm came on the heels of a nor'easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast.

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Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Paul J. Weber in Austin; Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Paul Davenport in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis and Jay Reeves in Alabaster, Alabama, contributed to this report.

CLEVELAND — The snowy weather often means extra work for car owners, but there’s one shortcut that could cost you in the long run.

You may notice in the winter, many drivers put their windshield wipers straight up into the air to keep them from freezing to the windshield, but it also means you’re putting stress on the spring that holds the wiper arms against the windshield.

“I guess that would definitely assist you in scraping your windshield off if the wiper blades were frozen to the windshield, but it can be a very costly mistake in high winds,” said William Robinson, general manager of Terry’s North Coast Auto.

Robinson said leaving the wipers up exposes the plastic gears and other mechanical components that could be weakened or damaged by forceful wind gusts.

The exposure to the elements could also cause the rubber blade to be blown off.

“If the winds catch that or somebody bumps your car, and that wiper blade will slam against that cold windshield and crack your glass,” Robinson said.

An alternative way to save time is to cover the entire windshield with a blanket, tarp, or even a piece of cardboard to prevent show and ice buildup: another essential winter addition—winter wiper blades.

“The winter blades are referred to now as profile blades, and they don't have the little plastic junctions and pieces that can move,” Robinson said. “It's all one-piece wiper blade, and it doesn't have any pieces on it that can freeze and stop it from working properly.”

Another big mistake Robinson’s shop sees the most in the winter is driving with old or worn-down tires. You can use the coin trick to inspect your tires.

If you insert a penny or quarter into the tread and see either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln’s head, it’s time to replace your tires.

“Having good traction in the front and the rear is very important regardless of the drive type of your vehicle, front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive,” Robinson said. “It’s important to have good tires, not the rear of your vehicle, so your vehicle doesn’t lose control while at higher speeds and taking corners.”

Jon Rudder at WEWS first reported this story.

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SHINING A LIGHT. GREAT STORY. LET US TALK WEATHER, LET’S GET TO CHIEF METEOROLOGIST KEVIN ROBINSON. CHILLY TEMPERATURES OVERNIGHT INTO THE MORNING. ARE WE GOING TO HIT THE REPEAT BUTTON? KEVIN: WE ARE. ALTHOUGH THINGS ARE STTIARNG AROUND THE CORNER TEMPERATURE WISE, WE HAVE A COUPLE OF VERY COLD NIGHTS AHEAD. TEMPERATURES WILL MODERATE INTO THE WEEKEND. HERE’S WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. HIGH-PRESSURE THAT IS BUT TO OUR WEST THE PAST SEVERAL DSAY I WAS LEFT THE GATE OPEN. OUR WINDS WILL SWITCH SOUTHLYER AND THAT WILL BRING A GRADUAL MODIFICATION TO TEMPERATURES. EVEN INTO THE WEEKEND, WE HAVE A DECENT BREADOR F WIDESPREAD FROST AND FREEZE CONDITIONS UNTIL PROBABLY SUNDAY NIGHT. BY SUNDAY NIGHT, I THINK MOST OF US WILL AGAIN TO AVOID ANY THREAT FOR FROST OR FREEZE CONDITIONS. HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT TONIGHT. WE ARE ALREADY IN THE UPPER '4’S, HEADED FOR LOWE’S IN TTOHE MIDDLE AND UPPER 20’S. I SUSPECT THERE WILL BE ANOTHER HARD FROST AND FREEZE FOR EVERYONE AROUND THE TRI-STATE TONIGHT, AS LOW AS 26 IN HAMILTON, 29ENVER D SALES, 27 IN MASON IN LOVELAND, SPRINGBORO 29. NICE RECOVERY TOMORROW. WE ARE INTO THE 50’S HEADING INTO TOMORROW, LOW 50’S FOR HIGHS AND 50’S ON SATURDAY IF YOU ARE HEADING TO THE BEARCATS GAME. ARNE 60 SUNDAY FOR THE BENGALS. IF YOU ARE TAILGATING THEM A IT IS STILL -- IF YOU ARE TAILGATING, IT IS STILL GOING TO BE CHILLY SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. SETTING SUN AND 48 IN CINCINNATI, THE WIND IS STARTING TO RELAX AND LIGHT WIND. THESE NUMBERS WILL GET CLOSE, THE TEMPERATURE IN THE DEW POINT. IT GIVES A CLUE TO WHERE WE EAR HEADED OVERNIGHT. BEGINNING TO SPLI INTO THE MID-40’S, MOST OF US IN T 3HE0’S BY 80:0 OR 830. -- 8:30. WE WILL COAST IO TNTHE MID-20’S BEFORE THE SUN COMES UP TOMORROW. ANOTHER CLEAR, COLDND A FROSTY ONE. TOMORROW, COOL SUNSHINE, A NICE DAY, WE WILL TOP OUT AROUND 50, A FEW FOLKS IN THE LOW 50’S. THE DAY PLANNER STARTING WITH THE ICE SCRAPER AGAIN IN THE MORNING IF YOU PARK OSIUTDE. THAWING OUT BY AFTERNO.ON THE SEVEN DAY FORECAST, TEMPERATURES RISE TO 60 SUNDAY IN THE MID 60’S, JUST SHY OF 70 EARLY NEXT WEEK. OUR NEXT REAL THREAT VERANDAS NOT GETTGIN UNTIL THURSDAY AND BEREFO THEN, EVEN THOUGH IT MAY BE NICE AND SUN,NY WE LOSE -- OR GAZE ANOTHER -- GAIN ANOTHER HOUR OF SLEEP.

More cold nights before temperatures moderate this weekend.

CINCINNATI —

More cold nights before temperatures moderate this weekend.